April 14, 2011

Obama: Incorrigible Statist and Debt Menace

In my book "Crimes Against Liberty," I described President Obama as dishonest, hyper-partisan, a bully, a narcissist and a hard-core left-wing ideologue. Anyone who thinks my description is exaggerated or too harsh didn't hear his Wednesday speech on the budget.

One might have expected that a newly elected president who had "inherited" such a disturbingly high deficit, a growing national debt, and a forecast of unfunded entitlements soon to explode because of baby boomer demographics alone would roll up his sleeves and tackle this deficit and debt problem.

Instead, Obama saw that $1.3 trillion deficit, licked his Marxist chops, and used it as an excuse to double down on the profligate spending that was driving our budgetary problems in the first place. He proposed -- and secured -- an $800 billion "stimulus" package.

With messianic winds at his back, Obama proceeded to implement the plan, which couldn't have even qualified as a bona fide stimulus measure in the eyes of an avowed Keynesian. It was a combination of political paybacks, pork and unprecedented waste, with millions going to phantom ZIP codes under the watchful eye of Obama's stimulus cop, ol' sleeping Joe Biden. Adding insult to the sham claim that this money was designed to stimulate, just a fraction of the money was spent in the first year.

Hindsight confirms what many of us predicted: The stimulus did not stimulate. Unemployment became much worse, and the debt continued to explode. Obama's solution was to ignore the entitlements issue and devise new ways to bankrupt the nation, from cap and trade to Obamacare to reversing welfare reform.

Finally, everyone started to recognize our impending national financial crisis, thanks to the alternative media and the tea party. Obama went through the motions of establishing a "bipartisan" deficit commission, but when it recommended remedial action, he shelved it. He then presented his 10-year budget plan, which he said wouldn't add a penny to the debt but in fact would add some $8 trillion. Then he was AWOL, pretending to be above the "childish" partisan fray occurring in Congress over continuing resolutions.

Next, Rep. Paul Ryan produced his "Path to Prosperity," which boldly addressed entitlements, other spending issues and the oft-forgotten component of balancing budgets, economic growth. Obama was forced out of hiding to give us yet another speech on the budget.

His speech was insulting, misleading, reckless and disgraceful. Instead of offering serious, specific proposals, he gave us generalities and partisan and class warfare. In the words of Ryan in an interview with radio host Mark Levin, Obama basically accused Ryan and other Republicans of being un-American -- of "pitting children with autism or Down syndrome against millionaires." Ryan said he'd never seen a president give a speech that stooped to this level of partisanship, demagoguery and distortion. Obama's "poisoning the well."

Instead of tackling the spending issue head-on, Obama said the problem is that the rich don't pay enough. And, I kid you not, he suggested setting up another bogus commission.

As Ryan pointed out, this is not a tax problem; Americans, especially the wealthy, are taxed enough. The top 1 percent of earners pay about 38 percent, and the top 10 percent almost 70 percent. Hiking their taxes would decrease, not increase, revenues.

Just as he did with the health care summit, Obama lured the Republicans to this meeting with overtures of bipartisanship, reconciliation and compromise. But as Ryan related, Obama didn't even offer to meet Republicans halfway. He sneered at them in full campaign mode, defiantly promising more of his failed, reckless solutions.

He offered not the slightest acknowledgment that his policies have contributed to this crisis. Rather than concede that we can't continue on this destructive path, he lectured us on how we must continue on this path.

The America of Obama's dreams is not the one of self-reliance and entrepreneurship to which he paid phony lip service at the beginning of his speech. It is an America in which the government, rather than the private sector, creates wealth and leads ignorant, helpless people by the nose from cradle to grave, from preschool to the academy, with the caveat that if they succeed too much, they will make themselves enemies of the state and targets for punitive action. Obama's new American dream is an American nightmare.

Just as Obama refused to hear the American people on his dastardly Obamacare and insisted that they "take another look" at his plan -- a 55th look, to be precise -- he is now insisting that we continue to bankrupt America, because he refuses to abandon his Marxist determination to confiscate and redistribute private property and consummate his grandiose vision of transforming America from a land of equal opportunity to one of equal outcomes -- depressed outcomes.

He is an incorrigible, militant statist who will not stop of his own volition, so he must be defeated. If this latest performance doesn't awaken the lingering Obama apologists to the full extent of his aversion to solving America's problems, nothing will, and they must be defeated, too.